Vice President David Mabuza.
- ANC Vice President David Mabuza delivered a scathing organizational report on Saturday.
- He said that the ANC was at a crossroads that threatened its very existence.
- In particular, he lamented the decline in the party’s membership, electoral support and the confidence deficit among South Africans.
The ANC is at a crossroads, with the integrity of the party in serious doubt.
This is according to ANC vice-president David Mabuza, who delivered the party’s organizational report on Saturday.
“We must recognize that the ANC is experiencing a crisis that threatens its existence. We cannot hope to achieve any of our objectives and regain the trust of the people if we do not take the necessary measures,” he said.
Mabuza suggested that the party needed, “through concrete actions”, to show that it deserved the trust of the people.
He warned the party of its declining electoral performance, saying the leadership should focus on strengthening coalition strategies, “as they have become our new reality.”
The conference should be concerned about the ANC’s electoral decline, he said.
The ANC declined from 62% in 2014 to 57% in 2018 and also took a beating in the 2021 local government election.
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Mabuza told delegates that the ANC only had a majority in 174 of the country’s 257 municipalities.
“Where the ANC has full control, these are mainly the poorest municipalities. Many are not financially viable, which has a massive impact on our ability to deliver services and local development.”
He said that in addition to declining electoral support for the ANC, low voter turnout was equally worrying.
Over the past five years, the ANC had failed to build permanent professional electoral capacity in offices at the national, regional and provincial levels, he said.
Coalition strategies had “become our new reality,” he said.
“However, we must work harder to win these municipalities back and save ourselves the hassle of working with small, overly ambitious, unreasonable and very small parties.”
Mabuza stressed that as a result of declining electoral support, the ANC had a smaller share of public funding for political parties.
He said the introduction of the Political Party Financing Law and the difficult economic environment had damaged party funds.
The outgoing vice president had to deliver the report because general secretary Ace Magashule is suspended and his deputy Jessie Duarte died earlier this year.
Membership
Delivering a scathing organizational report to the conference on Saturday, Mabuza said the party’s membership had declined by 33% over the past 10 years.
In 2012, the ANC had registered more than 1.2 million members, but as of 2022 it was at a low of 661,498, he said.
“Organizing in urban areas is a major challenge for the ANC in all provinces. The higher the concentration of people, the greater the challenge, as indicated by election results and membership numbers.”
The ANC bled the most members in Mpumalanga, followed by the North West and the Free State. He had lost the smallest number of followers in Limpopo, the report noted.
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Although the ANC had not grown in any of the provinces in the last 10 years, Mabuza applauded the new membership system as a mechanism to renew the party.
“The system brought positive developments in the ANC, but it also exposed several negative aspects and some disturbing ills in the organization. The most disturbing features are the resistance of some members. [who] ignore old practices that the system was built to eradicate. Even after the implementation of the new system, there are still remnants of the surveillance culture and attempts to manipulate the ANC’s processes,” he warned.
